1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to inventory management, and more particularly, to a solution for managing and forecasting the inventory of one or more components during a migration, such as an information technology migration.
2. Background Art
In information technology (IT), a “migration” is a change from one hardware and/or software technology to another. A migration may be performed for various reasons, and typically includes one or more hardware/software components being migrated (e.g., installed, removed, replaced, upgraded, patched, etc.) on one or more targets (e.g., computers, workstations, etc.). To this extent, a migration may synchronize the software/hardware for all users in a company, enable an IT infrastructure to accommodate more users, modernize the IT infrastructure, etc. For example, an entity (e.g., a company) may migrate each user's computer from one operating system (e.g., Windows® XP®) to another operating system (e.g., Linux®). In this case, the Linux® operating system is a key component of the migration, and having a sufficient number of copies of the Linux® operating system available for installation is essential in implementing the migration.
During a typical migration, a target group of users and their corresponding migration-related needs are identified. Subsequently, a timetable for performing the migration can be generated. The timetable can estimate an amount of and a time period during which a particular hardware/software component will be required to be available for installation. In general, an IT manager/department will generate and manage the timetable for the group of users and the new hardware/software component(s).
For a large entity, several IT departments may be involved in performing a migration. For example, International Business Machines of Armonk, N.Y. (IBM) has several sites, each of which has its own IT department. During an entity-wide migration (e.g., from a token ring network to an ethernet network) for a large entity such as IBM, component-related problems, e.g., a shortfall in the availability of one or more migration components, are more likely to occur. However, these problems can frequently be averted and/or resolved by cooperation between the various sites and IT departments. To facilitate this sharing, it is desirable to readily obtain inventory and forecast information for the various sites.
To date, there is no solution for effectively managing and forecasting the inventory for one or more key components of an IT migration. To this extent, a need exists for an improved solution for managing and forecasting inventory of component(s) for an entity during the migration. In particular, there exists a need for a solution that enables the inventory of one or more key components of the migration to be managed and forecast on an entity-wide basis.